The Keelmen of Tyneside

A comprehensive account of the everyday lives of the keelmen of Tyneside, and their struggles and industrial disputes. For hundreds of years the keelmen, the "keel lads o' coaly Tyne" celebrated in the north-east folk song "The Keel Row", ferried coal down-river to the estuary and cast it aboard ships bound for London or overseas. They were "the very sinews of the coal trade" on which the prosperity of the region depended. This book charts the history of the keelmen from the early seventeenth ce